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Jay Prince is a real gangster. He ain't hiding behind a desk talking. He is the true living definition of what a gangster is. If you wanna see the truth and what gangster really is, that's what Jay Prince is.
I had no work after 'Gangster' for two years, and my sister Rangoli met with an accident that destroyed her looks. My struggle with my parents combined with the industry not accepting me made me feel alienated.
It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.
People want to classify and say, 'OK, this is a gangster film.' 'This is a Western.' 'This is a... ' You know? It's easy to classify and it makes people feel comfortable, but it doesn't matter, it doesn't really matter.
Jay-Z is a hero, Sam Walton is a hero - these are not exactly communitarian champions. These are - in some cases, literally; in others, just figuratively - gangster heroes. That's who is worshipped: people who get away with it.
Especially the young kids who don't have any guidance, just stuck on trying to be a tough guy or trying to be a gangster - there are different ways out there to better yourself. You just need the right guy out there to push you.
Terre Haute. They used to call it 'Terrible Hut' because it was so wide open. Gambling, red light district, speak-easies. I entertained for all the gangsters. Can't name a gangster that didn't come into the place where I worked.
I used to tell my friends, 'Art Blakey is way more gangster than Eazy-E!' I ended up getting my friends into jazz, and all of a sudden there was this little group of kids in the middle of South Central that were all into hard-bop.
The thing that was fascinating and frustrating about Pac was that he clearly knew better than to go down the gangster road that he went down. Pac knew - and he was right - that thug energy could be redirected into fearless positivity.
I think I could totally be a gangster, but I could never be the kind of gangster that carries things out myself. I would have to be the kingpin that has my minions go and do the dirty bidding. I think I'd be pretty good at giving orders.
The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny each other's existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.
Homeboy Industries is a healing center for broken children. I was a broken child, and they showed me how to put all those pieces back together. It's not about being a gangster. It's about being a man or a woman trying to recover and live better.
We were in the heart of the ghetto in Chicago during the Depression, and every block - it was probably the biggest black ghetto in America - every block also is the spawning ground practically for every gangster, black and white, in America too.
I was always raised on cowboy films, and then when I could start making choices about the movies I wanted to watch I found myself wanting to watch gangster films which were slightly more sophisticated than the baseline stuff that was in westerns.
Music fills peoples with life. It doesn't have to be a 'happy song.' If you have that one song that relates to you, whether it's a sad song or a gangster song, whatever relates to you the most in that moment, it can literally get you through the day.
After a show, I'll get the 16-year-old white kid whose lip is pierced, his head is shaved and his parents hate him, and the young gangster from the screwed-up 'hood, and they say that now they realize there's someone out there who thinks like they do.
I got into an argument with someone because I said I think 2Pac will be regarded as a great poet. They said he was just a punk gangster. People said the same thing about Francois Villon, and he's now considered the best French Romantic poet of all time.
I remember my first thing was 'CSI: Miami.' I played a Cuban gangster. And that was it. I was like, 'Wow, I don't have to clean toilets.' I could actually dress up and get paid equivalent to that. So that was my introduction into the Hollywood industry.
It's funny how the ruthless, murderous gangster has really been romanticized by the media. I mean, I grew up watching the 'Godfathers' and 'Scarface,' and they were the coolest. They're just really interesting stories with great characters. They're rock stars.
When you see my performances, even people that you might have known, like Nicky Barnes in 'American Gangster,' you have to get over the fact that I look like Cuba Gooding, Jr. But once you find truth in the performance, if I'm doing my job right, you believe everything.
I look forward to parts that have a dimension or depth to them. This makes it interesting for me to do and the audience to watch. Whether he's a chocolate boy die hard romantic or a gangster with swag, every good has a little bad and every bad has a little good in them.
The primary school I attended in Shanghai was a very liberal one, established by scholars who had return from an education in France. The children of leading families were enrolled there, including the son of a well-known man believed to be a top gangster of the underworld!
I'm tired of Italian gangsters. Not that I don't watch 'The Godfather' every morning when I get up and 'Goodfellas' when I go to sleep at night. But I've just always been fascinated by Russia as a country, by the Russian personality. And now Russia is literally a gangster nation.
Having a persona people recognize, it's the thing that probably gets you paid the most - but it's also the thing that virtually every actor in the world doesn't want. 'Cause, like, no one would believe me if I wanted to play something ultra-realistic, like a gangster or something.
I saw the police thriller The Blue Lamp' and remember realizing the power that Dirk Bogarde as the gangster exerted over the audience simply by his expressions in the close-ups. I could see how the people around me reacted to him and realized that I wanted to have the same effect.
You know, Castle's the kind of guy that when he meets somebody, that's a connection for him. He remains connected to the people that he meets. That's the kind of guy he is, be they criminals, gangster rappers, mafia guys, art thieves, whoever it is, he nurtures those relationships.
I like 'The Usual Suspects'. Great film. I also like 'Scarface', films like that. Lots of gangster films. I really like watching all kinds of films, dramas, romance. I'll watch comedies. I like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Denzel Washington, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle. I'd like to meet them.
If you are black on television, you are probably going to be some kind of thug, gangster, or portrayed in a negative light. If you are some type of Muslim, you are going to be blowing stuff up. If you are Hispanic, you are going to be some type of gangbanger. I've felt like this for years.
If you look at the movie 'Belly,' I identify with Sincere the most. I am a gangster. I love my lady to death. I'm not in the game for the wrong reasons. I'm not in the game for the glory. I'm in the game to survive so the people that I love could be straight. I'm a highly intelligent individual.
Some time after 'Gangster Squad,' after I'd made a couple other movies, I was like, 'In retrospect that 'Zombieland' experience was about as good as it can get, both between the cast and the world of the movie and the way it was received.' I was like, 'We should probably do another 'Zombieland.'
Maybe it's stress or anger or adrenaline or disillusionment or a bullying nature or simple fear of getting killed themselves, but there is a problem if a cop cannot tell the difference between a menacing gangster and the far more common person they encounter whose life is a little frayed and messy.
All the great artists had their dark sides. Look at Amy Winehouse or anyone who has achieved a certain level of success. Even Adele, and the people that you wouldn't put in the same category as a gangster rapper. These women have exposed their vulnerabilities, demons, and things that have hurt them.
I never was that boy who loved gangster films, but when I was growing up, I was obsessed with the detective Dick Tracy. It was one of my favourite movies as a kid, and he really inspired me. I would have loved to be part of that golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s. It made me want to become an actor.
I think the part of media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent. When you look at the majority of shows on television they placate that kind of behavior.
My dad is Scottish, and he read in the newspaper about the plight of the Scottish Freshwater Mussel, which is a real thing - like, a very real, serious conservation issue. And he's a writer, and he was going to do a film about a Glaswegian gangster, and then I stole the idea and turned it into a romantic comedy.
Roles constantly have to be redefined in any form of entertainment. Look back at the gangster pics of the 1930s and 1940s and the way James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart would play the part. These roles were redefined in the 1970s by Al Pacino and Rober DeNiro. And again in the 1990s by Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins.
Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar.
I wasn't fully aware of the things that Madlib did musically, but my manager put me up on game. I'm not gonna act like I was a Madlib head when I wasn't. I didn't understand a lot of it at first. But it opened my mind to some things, and it's me bringing that gangster element to things that he does. It's like a perfect marriage.
I never quite lived up to the image of the black man as I saw it growing up. I was never listening to the right music at the right time or wearing the right clothes at the right time. I was still listening to Michael Jackson, and everyone had sort of moved on to gangster rap. Alanis Morissette when everyone else was listening to En Vogue.
Melissa Barak, an ex-City Ballet dancer and sometime choreographer, has put together an unspeakably dopey and incompetent mess called 'Call Me Ben,' combining ultra-generic dance, terrible dialogue and disastrous storytelling, about the founding of Las Vegas by the gangster Bugsy Siegel, who insists, violently, on being addressed as 'Ben.'
'The Sopranos' gets praised as novelistic, but it follows the most banal of life patterns, showing the sheer tedium of being a mobster. It has dead spots, boring plotlines, weak episodes. Characters develop slowly, or don't. Like viewers, a gangster might get bored, fade out of the action, then come back to find none of his debts forgotten.
Everybody who is anyone wanted to meet a real life gangster, and here's Joey Gallo hitting the scene. What more could you want with a gangster? He looked the part. They call it gangster chic. He dressed like the 'Reservoir Dogs' - black suit, white shirt, skinny black tie. You know, he had the whole look down. And the big shades, of course.
When this ugly gangster told Joe Glaser that he must take the name of Armstrong down, off of the marquee, and it was an 'order from Al Capone,' Mr. Glaser looked this cat straight in the face and told him these words: 'I think that Louis Armstrong is the world's greatest, and this is my place, and I defy anybody to take his name down from there.'